


Moonage Daydream

by cher



Category: Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Album)
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ziggy Stardust, alter ego.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moonage Daydream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kenaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenaz/gifts).



> A Yuletide Treat for kenaz.

“Fuck, yeah, man. I knew Bowie. Back then we all knew Bowie, or Ziggy, yeah, depended when you met him, yeah?” (laughs)

“Oh, man, he was like a god to us. Fuckin’ _beautiful_ , man, you got no idea. Don’t get dudes like him no more, damn shame. His fuckin’ voice, yeah, and he was some kind of genius with the music, but he was even more genius with the _look_. He just had the _look_ , man, you know. One in a fuckin’ million knows how to pull that shit off, the bloody glitter and makeup and Jesus man, the shoes. Yeah, that man, anyone took one look at him and it was want to shag him or you were just stone cold dead inside.”

(laughs) “Nah, man, never did. Not that I could tell you, anyhow, you know, some of those parties – I might have, yeah? Might have done anything, man, you know how it was, booze and drugs and whatever else goin’ around. Don’t remember shagging Bowie, though, or Ziggy neither. Would have jumped at it, man, let me tell you. Yeah. Fuckin’ gorgeous, you know what I’m saying. Jesus, bastard’s _still_ fuckin’ gorgeous, that’s that worst of it!” (laughs) “Just not fuckin’ fair, is it? Well, that dude is just magic, that’s his way.

“What do I remember most about him? (loud laugh) Man, the old memory, it’s patchy. Some of those days are just gone, you know? Some of the ones you thought were gonna be one of those days you keep forever, yeah, don’t work out that way, does it? Not always. Ah, man. I remember the fuckin’ _joy_ of it all when it was going right, you know? We were the fuckin’ Spiders from Goddamn Mars, and Ziggy was gonna save our whole fuckin’ world. It was just the time of our fuckin’ lives, you know. How does anything get better than that? The clothes and the glitter, yeah, and flyin’ so high on the drugs and the _kids_ , yeah? The kids. (shakes head) They’d go off their pretty heads and take us right along with them.

“I remember one night back then, talkin’ to Bowie out on some fire escape at arse o’clock in the mornin’, him starting to get sober off last night’s booze. I remember because it was the only time I ever spent with him without any other bugger there, yeah? Havin’ a smoke out there, somewhere in America, you never remember where the fuck you are on a tour. Yeah, we spent some time out there, talkin’ shit, and Bowie – he was Bowie right then; you learned to tell – he says out of nowhere, ‘Bill, don’t let the aliens take you as well, when one of them asks; tell them no, tell them they can’t have you,’ and I ask him what the fuck he’s talkin’ about, kind of joking at first because we’re always talkin’ shit, you know, but then I saw he was fuckin’ serious. Bowie, man, he got serious, but he looked ... fuck, man, you don’t forget seein’ Bowie look _scared_ , mate. That bugger was scared of nothing and no one.

“And I couldn’t believe he would be scared of fuckin’ Ziggy of all people, I mean he fuckin’ _was_ Ziggy, he made him the fuck up, yeah? But then I thought, yeah, he’s Ziggy more and more and I got to thinkin’ I hadn’t seen Bowie around much lately. You lose track on tour, man, you got no idea if you’ve never been there. But Bowie, yeah, I could see it when I thought about it.

“I didn’t know if it was the drugs or the fuckin’ not sleeping – man, that can fuck with you, you never see how much until you get some sleep again, vicious fuckin’ circle. Or if, you know, Bowie was just losing it from pretending to be Ziggy every fuckin’ night and half the day when the press were at us. Press are enough to crack any cat up, man. No offence. (laughs)

“So, anyway, I ask him what he means, the aliens, and he told me about the deal he made with Ziggy, Ziggy and the fuckin’ five year deal. I guess it seemed easy to him, five years of his life for fame and art and the music, always for the music. But I could see it was cracking him up. Now, man, I don’t know to this day what it was; drugs, fuckin’ exhaustion, aliens, just plain losin’ it. I don’t know. I love that man just the same, Jesus, his _genius_ , we’ll never see another cat like him. Ziggy fuckin’ Stardust. (shakes head, long pause)

“Anyway. Next day I pass Ziggy in the hotel hallway – Ziggy was back again, Bowie gone – and he stops me and Paul – you could ask Paul if he remembers this, but man, you know what all of our memories are for those days – he stops me and Paul, and he grins at me. Ziggy’s grin was always just a little bit scary, man, you know? Just a little bit out there, a little bit too manic even for those days. He says to me, ‘Earth is everything to me, Bill. Some of my friends, it’s everything to them too. Maybe you want to help us.’ And Paul’s lookin’ at me, like _what the fuck is this all about_ , and I look back at Ziggy and ... well, fuck, maybe Bowie’s just fuckin’ with me, but I got scared there. I got scared and I said no to Ziggy, mate, and you got no idea how much I’d never thought I do _that_. And Ziggy, he smirks at me, says nothing, and he walks off down the hall in his boots and his glitter, and mate, I was fuckin’ _relieved_ , what the hell was that about?

“So I guess that’s the time I remember most, the day I thought Ziggy Stardust really was an alien who had taken over Bowie’s body part time. Maybe he was. Maybe Bowie went fuckin’ nuts. Maybe I did. It was all nuts, mate, all of it. All fuckin’ beautiful, crazy shit. I wouldn’t trade a fuckin’ second of it.” (pause)

“What the fuck to you mean, mate, Earth is everything to you too? Are you fuckin’ with me?”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bill and Paul have no basis in reality as far as I know.
> 
> Here's what Bowie himself had to say about Ziggy:
> 
> "I'd found my character - I'd found my hero. There was a lot of clown in that character - there is a lot of Charlie Chaplain - [and] all those poignant one-man figures....The "one-man against the world' really reverberated in my mind. That was something I really homed in on - I really focused on those kind of individuals. Now we start hitting real problems because I enjoyed the character so much and it was so much easier for me to live within that character that, along with the help of some chemical substances at the time, it became easier and easier for me to blur the lines between reality and the blessed creature that I created - my doppelganger. I wasn't getting rid of him at all - in fact I was joining forces with him. The doppelganger and myself were starting to become one and the same person. Then you start on the trail of chaotic psychological destruction. You become what is called a drug casualty at the end of it all (laugh)." - Bowie (1992)
> 
> "Ziggy is partially autobiographical and partly someone else. He's the ultimate parasite...Please don't ask me to theorise on Ziggy....have written it down its all too personal. He's a monster and I'm Dr Frankenstein. He's my brother, and God, I love him." - Bowie (1976)
> 
> (Quotes taken from http://www.5years.com/quotes.htm)


End file.
